LEI LIANG COMMISSION

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PROJECT DESCRIPTION

This piece will be an addition to a series of works entitled “Xiaoxiang” that Lei Liang has been working on since 1994. The term Xiaoxiang refers to the region in Southern China where the rivers Xiao and Xiang intersect. A tragic event took place in that region during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). A woman’s husband was killed by a local communist official. Without the means to seek justice, she took revenge on the official by wailing like a ghost behind his residence every night until months later, both the official and herself went insane.

In the new project, Lei Liang will re-construct this story using the force of a saxophone quartet, and explore the dynamic relationship between fragmentation and interconnection between musical materials. The piece alludes to the folk songs of the Yao people from this region as well as the exclamatory style of singing in the Peking Opera.

This work was made possible by a grant from Fromm Foundation.